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[gimymblert]

Great topic!  I’d love to see some indie life sims – the potential for new ideas here is huge.

Dwarf Fortress is indie and is pretty much the ultimate life form.

fixed 

[mirosurabu]

Dwarf Fortress is indie and is pretty much the ultimate life sim.

Which reminded me of one important thing - I don't like spatial navigation in life sims. In fact, to me, the most important thing about simulations is that they are the only role-playing genre that doesn't involve spatial navigation.

[supershigi]

I really enjoyed Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon.  I think these were the things I was the most drawn to:

1.) The relationship building aspect: I really liked interacting with the villagers and growing my relationships with them over time.  Especially with Animal Crossing, the developers took a lot of care to make each NPC feel like they had distinct quirky personalities, and it was fun getting to know them.  I enjoyed both the part that mirrored building friendships in real life, as well as the "leveling" aspect (giving them gifts, helping them finish their furniture sets, visiting them daily, etc.)

2.) Customizing my world: I loved that I could create my own world that felt very personal.  I actually hate Farmville and those Freemium Tap-games because I don't understand the point of waiting 12 hours for some kind of home or garden accessory right off the bat... I would never want to pay money or wait around for an item in a world I care nothing about.  I am still baffled by how well they do because I personally get zero enjoyment out of them.  The only reason I enjoyed customizing my house and town in Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon was because I felt invested in the world enough that it felt somewhat real to me.  I never feel like that when I first start out.  AC and HM did a good job of gradually introducing me to the world so that I really felt like I was a part of it.

3.) Mystery and Exploration: There were a lot of mysteries in both of those games... In HM there were hidden areas, things that would only appear during certain seasons and at certain times, etc.  In AC the animals had hidden backstories (Brewster especially), there were ghosts that appeared at certain times of the night, animals that would come to your town randomly and give you quests (the cat who had lost her kitten), festivals, etc.  Basically, the more involved you got in the world each day, the more curious you would become about all the hidden secrets out there.  I never felt overwhelmed by it because it was presented to me gradually.

Hope that helps!

[Theophilus]

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Thanks for your post. I don't know how hard it will be to put story in a not-so-story driven game, but I'll try to deliver it.


The progress on my game is about 10%; I have all the design done, now to just programmerize, artificitate, and composurify this puppy up.

[s0]

Good points Supershigi!

I think your post made me realize something. There are two general types of lifesims: "character-driven" (Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon) and "system-driven" (Conway's Game of Life, Sim Earth). The first is about individual characters (duh!) and getting the player emotionally involved in the game, while the other is more like a virtual ant farm.

Of course it's more like a spectrum than a dichotomy. The Sims and Dwarf Fortress fall somewhere between them, for instance.

[baconman]

Exactly! I think the most challenging aspect of a "life sim" game is that nobody completely agrees on just what one actually is. It's one of those few genres left that haven't really been "mastered" to that point.

I mean, to some people it's all about the personalization and deliberate construction of things, and to others it's more about things "being alive around them," or semi-random stuff happening; or about realism vs. surrealism, and direct achievement vs. minigame achievements.

Although it's focused more on other genres, I hadn't really considered that my project(s) also kind of border on "life-sim" too. It's all kinda like a big "gamedev game about gamers (and/or game characters?)." And the character-oriented meta-life-sim also illustrates to me part of what I found appealing about Mystery Dungeon games, too.

[s0]

I think life sims are a bit like the puzzle genre in that their principles can be attached to a wide variety of core gameplay types. There is no "default" lifesim gameplay.

Continuing from what I said about character driven vs. system driven, I think "adventure" is the most common core gameplay for character-driven lifesims while "strategy" is the most common for system-driven ones.

[supershigi]

Continuing from what I said about character driven vs. system driven, I think "adventure" is the most common core gameplay for character-driven lifesims while "strategy" is the most common for system-driven ones.

That's a good point, I don't think I thought of it like that beore!  I do feel more of a sense of "adventure" when I'm playing games like Animal Crossing, whereas playing games like Sim City make me go into perfectionist mode where I'm just trying to focus on how to best organize things.

[jwk5]

One of the most disappointing things about The Sims is that my character can't grab a hatchet and go all 'axe murderer' on his neighbors. If a 'life sim' let's me create life then it should let me end life too (and not in the roundabout way The Sims only lets me torture and kill them). Damn... I have issues.

[supershigi]

^Haha... that's kind of how I felt after playing games like Crazy Taxi.  I loved that they let you run over pedestrians and crash into buildings and stuff.